Developing a social media strategy

01Sep

By Ken Granger

Social media platforms can be a powerful resource for businesses when utilized properly. As part of your social media strategy, it’s important to understand the strengths of each network and how to invest in the right networks to help grow your business. A focused social media presence ensures that you can produce great content and respond to comments on time. Every business should start with the basics – a well designed logo for your profile image, and branding for the customizable part of each profile page.

The right content for the right platform

If you want to run a successful social media campaign for your business, you first need to understand each platform, the nature of your audience, and how you can use the platform for business. Today every business is competing for the same market. Therefore, the more time you spend optimizing your content for a particular platform, the higher your chances of success. To really ensure your content will stand out, focus on headlines the are attention grabbing while using bright and unique images.

Social media strategy

Often, businesses will send traffic from their website to their social media accounts with clickable icons for each platform. But, if you are properly using your social media accounts, they should be sending traffic to your website. Not the other way around. Your website is the center of your marketing efforts, so why send traffic away? This is why it is important to know how social media fits into your overall business strategy. Grow your audience on each network and develop a flow from your social media channels to your website. This will help increase the number of qualified leads that come in from your website.

Timely sharing

In order to achieve maximum engagement, you will want to make sure that your content reaches as many people as possible. Consistency is the key. You will want to come up with a post schedule that ensures your content is posted during specifics times during the day. Different social media networks have different peak times. There is a lot of information on what post times are best, but in reality, it depends on your audience and post frequency. Test different days and times to figure out what works best for your audience. You can also make use of tools such as Facebook Insights or Twitter Analytics to get better insight.

Sharing on the right platform

There are numerous social media platforms coming up every other day, all jostling for your attention. What you should remember is that different social media platforms cater to different audiences and purposes. Therefore, the first step is identifying and familiarizing yourself with the platform used by the target audience. Pay more attention to those platforms that are likely to give you higher levels of engagement.

Join the conversation

Posting or sharing your content on social media is one thing. However, you need to show your presence in order to engage with potential clients. You can participate in Google Hangouts or Twitter chats on issues relating to your business. Don’t just jump in trying to sell. Actively participate and contribute to conversations on each platform. As long as you belong to the community and have an understanding of the community, you will be able to reach potential clients naturally.

Bottom line

Any of the above listed efforts will take time before you can get established on social media. If you don’t have the funds, but you have time, you can handle the work yourself. However, if time is not on your side, you can simply hire a professional, to handle the work on your behalf.

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Ken Granger

Founder & CEO

For eight years Ken was the Director of Operations for a multi-million dollar retailer at Walter Disney... Read Ken's full bio